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Three missing in migrant shipwreck southeast of Italy: charity

Three people are missing and presumed drowned after a migrant boat was shipwrecked in the central Mediterranean, southeast of an Italian island, although almost 40 others on board were rescued, German aid group ResQship said on Saturday.

Published: 7 May 2023 09:16 CEST

Italian coast guard officers and firefighter corps divers are pictured near the body of a dead migrant on February 27, 2023, after a migrant boat sank off Italy's southern Calabria region

Italian coast guard officers and firefighter corps divers are pictured near the body of a dead migrant on February 27, 2023, after a migrant boat sank off Italy's southern Calabria region. Three migrants have been reported missing after a shipwreck southeast of Italy on Friday. Photo: Alessandro SERRANO / AFP

Tunisian fishermen were first on the scene on Friday evening when ResQship’s vessel, the Nadir, arrived to help, a spokeswoman told AFP.

“When Nadir arrived, the fishermen had already taken aboard 38 people who were in the water. They told us that there are three people missing,” she said.

The incident occurred southeast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, halfway on the route from the Tunisian city of Sfax.

The charity said survivors were taken by the Italian coastguard to Lampedusa, where the reception centre has for weeks been overwhelmed by the number of arrivals.

READ ALSO: Italy declares state of emergency as migrant landings soar

More than 42,000 people have arrived on Italy’s shores since the start of 2023, almost four times the number in the same period last year, according to interior ministry figures.

Many of those attempting the crossing from north Africa to Europe to do not make it.

The reasons behind the sharp increase in the numbers of arrivals are complex and varied, but key factors include a rapidly deteriorating political and economic situation in Tunisia under President Kais Saied, and unusually mild weather conditions in the Mediterranean at the start of the year.

READ ALSO: ‘More will drown’: Italy accused of breaking international law on migrant rescues

The period of January to March 2023 was the deadliest first quarter for migrants in the central Mediterranean since 2017, the United Nations said on April 12, with 441 lives lost.

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Italy considering 'reciprocal plan' to swap refugees with US

“A reciprocal plan is currently being studied, according to which the US would host refugees present in Libya who want to go to Europe,” a source in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said.

At the same time, “some European Mediterranean states would host a few dozen South American refugees”, the source said.

The source was responding to a report by CBS News in the United States, which suggested that President Joe Biden’s administration was also in talks with Greece.

CBS said refugees would be selected at immigration offices set up by the United States last year in four Latin American countries.

It said 500 people could be sent both to Italy and Greece, though the source in Meloni’s office said that figure was “completely misleading”.

Rome is looking to accept “about 20 Venezuelan refugees of Italian origin” who would be able to work in Italy, the source said.

The plan would be “very advantageous for Italy and the European states of first arrival”, the source said, without elaborating.

A separate source at Italy’s interior ministry said Rome would “never assent to the relocation of hundreds of people on its national territory in view of its already considerable efforts in receiving migrants”.

In Athens, Greek migration minister Dimitris Kairidis dismissed the report.

“The CBS report is untrue. There is neither an agreement nor a request from the US to resettle legal immigrants in Greece,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

More than 2.4 million migrants crossed the southern US border in 2023 alone, largely from Central America and Venezuela, as they flee poverty, violence and natural disasters exacerbated by climate change.

Meanwhile Italy is among the first ports of call for migrants crossing from North Africa into Europe, recording almost 160,000 irregular arrivals by boat across the central Mediterranean last year.

Meloni’s government has made stopping irregular migration into Italy a priority.

It has sought to speed up asylum processing requests while signing new deals with departure countries.

It has also tried to deter migrants by setting up a new processing centre in Albania and limiting the activities of charities that operate rescue boats in the Mediterranean Sea.

Nearly 21,000 migrants have landed on Italy’s shores so far this year, compared to more than 50,000 in the same period last year, according to government data.

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